Battle of the Plains of Abraham

Be a prelude to: the head office of Quebec

The battle was in fact the culminating point of a seat which had begun the June 26th when the Britanniques unloaded with the Île of Orleans on the Fleuve the St. Lawrence. The British fleet, under the command of the admiral Charles Saunders, had sailed of Louisbourg until the Île of Cape-Breton the. The fleet was constituted of 49 ships with 1 944 guns and 13 500 team members, in addition to 140 smaller boats to bring to the ground the forces of 8 640 British soldiers (7 030 regular British, 1 280 American of the Thirteen Colonies of the general James Wolfe and 330 pieces of artillery). An attempt to put at ground 4 000 men on northern bank of the river with respect to the Montmorency Falls, the east of Beauport, failed the July 31st. The general Louis-Joseph de Montcalm had inflicted losses of 400 men to the enemy whereas on his side, one counted only 60 of them.

During July and August, the fleet of Saunders sailed length into broad on the St. Lawrence, in the search of possible points of accosting. The French, of which the naval forces were made up only of 1 460 men, sent ships armed against the British, but they offered only little resistance. James Cook, for a long time captain and explorer of the Peaceful , was one of the cartographers supervising the river. Farms, forts and deposits of provisioning were flarings. The British entirely did not take the control of the river and left open the road of provisioning to the French. There was very little provisioning to acquire, however the British navy blocked successfully the ports in France and controlled the entry of the St. Lawrence. The September 10th, Wolfe chooses the handle with the Fuller like zone of unloading. The handle with the Fuller, located at the bottom of a 53 meters high cliff on which Quebec rests, was protected by guns installed at the top from cliff. However it was not the point of unloading which Montcalm expected and it was much less better protected than the other possible sites from unloading. Wolfe had French soldiers speaking who retorted with the answers sentinels on the shore, making accept the French who the barges of unloading were in fact a convoy of boats of provisioning upstream.

Plains of Abraham

Montcalm had 13 390 and troops Militia available in the town of Quebec and, with Beauport a few kilometres from there, it could also count on 200 men of Cavalerie, 200 artillery men, 300 men of the First Nations (among which one counted warriors of the Big lakes according to Charles de Langlade) and 140 Acadie NS volunteers. This represented approximately the quarter of the whole population of News-France, but a significant portion of these forces was made up only of one inexperienced militia, contrary to the British, whose majority of the forces had already fought in the American colonies during the Seven Year old War.

A militia of approximately hundred men defended the top of cliff overhanging the Handle with the Fuller. 385 members of the British troops (especially of the Scot) succeeded in climbing cliff after a fashion and captured the guns and the camp of the French militia. This climbing was carried out by William Howe which will become the general-in-chief of the British army during the American revolution. (Ironically, William Howe will become the enemy of George Washington in Bunker Hill, New York, Brandywine, Valley Forge and will lose all North America in the south of the Big lakes when it decides to go to attack Philadelphia instead of going to help Burgoyne with the Bataille of Saratoga in 1777. This defeat involved France in the war and the loss for the British of the United States to the Bataille of Yorktown in 1781 and will lead to the Traité of Paris of 1783. William Howe, which accompanied James Wolfe this night, thus subsequently will lose the complete the United States.)

Approximately the thirteenth one of the 5 000 members of the British troops succeeds in rejoining the plains since cliff. During all the duration of the seat, the British like loss 270 had died and 1 220 wounded. The French losses at the time of the battle are unknown, but the British bombardments of the ships and the batteries placed at Holy-Pétronille and Lévis on the city were severe.

In the morning of September 13rd, Wolfe gathered 5 140 of its men on the Plains of Abraham apart from the town of Quebec. Montcalm could have refused to meet them at once as its advisers suggested to him. Its decision to give up the strengthened city and to begin against the British on the battle field besides is often seen like an error… Also, it did not engage the whole of its forces, but only 6 500 men approximately, slightly more than the British forces. It left other half of its army on the shore of Beauport, under the orders of its occasional rival Pierre de Rigaud of Vaudreuil, General governor of News-France, if the attack on the Plains of Abraham would prove to be a diversion.

In order to cover the whole width of the plate is city, Wolfe had made place its men on two rows. Without Montcalm being with the current, 1 500 men of the troops of elite placed under the command of its faithful subordinate Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (who had kept successfully the northern shore of the high-river of Quebec all along the summer) had gathered and were about to arrive at the east of the battle field, with the back of the British. In an unusual way, the careful one and methodical Montcalm did not wait to engage the battle. It feared the cutting off of the British. During the first load of Montcalm, Wolfe was mortally wounded. Those, more disciplined, having charged two balls in each mousquet, made fire with bearing end, after having waited until the French lines were with only 40 meters as of theirs. The French turned back by undergoing heavy losses. Chaos in the French rows (the soldiers left the regular troops because they believed the losses much larger than they were it really) returned the loads following disorganized and easily taken by the British; the quota of the Highlanders, charging with their swords claymore, was especially pitiless for the French. Montcalm ordered the retirement towards the city, reprocesses during which it was him also mortally wounded. He died the next day.

The retirement of the French Army towards bank is Rivière Saint-Charles was helped by a group of 200 militiamans, of which several Acadiens refugees, who had remained with the rear-guard of the French Army and who opposed a strong resistance to the British army to the bottom of the Badelard coast. It is the combat which made the most victims among the civilians at the time of the battle. The history was done very discrete in this respect; only a plate installed in 1997 with the garden of Saint-Roch points out this event.

Consequences

The two sides suffered from about the same number of losses: 658 British and 644 French. After having demolishes Montcalm apart from the city, the British were turned over towards Bougainville, exceeded of number and forced to make a retirement ordered towards Charlesbourg. There, Bougainville met Vaudreuil which had hastily given up the shore of Beauport by learning the defeat from Montcalm. The British, from now on under the orders of the general Murray, started to besiege Quebec in conjunction with the fleet of lower Saunders on the river. The result was not made wait: under the orders of De Ramezay, the garrison of Quebec went the September 18th (Capitulation of Quebec) whereas Bougainville tried a load against the British lines in order to restock the besieged city. The September 24th, Bougainville was withdrawn in the east of the city on the Rivière Jacques-Cartier.

Having released the last French obstacle which remained against the British navy on the St. Lawrence river, the battle of Quebec primarily opened all News-France with British control. In 1760, the British supplemented the conquest by capturing Montreal, even if the Bataille of Holy-Foy gave to the French a last taste of victory. The Traité of Paris was signed in 1763 to finish the war and the government of France decided to keep the Guadeloupe, an island of the Antilles producing of the Sucre with slaves, instead of the Canada which for some was only “A few arpents of snow” (Voltaire), whose richness connects was only to provide furs. It should be noted that this many times repeated quotation is the turned sour opinion of a writer, Voltaire, which had been expelled of the court of France by Louis XV to go to live in Germany. This opinion was published besides by the English in the Public Advertiser of London dated November 28th, 1759. This opinion was not besides that of Bougainville and other French who valiantly fought the English. Choiseul, the French ambassador, estimated moreover that the conquest of the News-France, while removing the last real obstacle with the independence of the American colonies, would shortly plunge the Anglo-Saxon world in a chaos from where it could leave only divided and weakened (the American revolution will give reason to Choiseul).

The British victory was going to be of short duration. By the catch of Quebec, the British removed the French threat and became useless for the Americans. Montcalm had predicted that if Quebec fell, the Americans would get rid of the British. Its prediction proved to be right. In 1781, the British were beaten by France with the Bataille of Yorktown in Virginia. The treaty of 1783 removed the major part of the News-France (the part in the South of the Big lakes) to the British who will have kept it only for 20 years. Several Canadian-French took part in the victory of Yorktown in 1781, like the major Clément Gosselin, Germain Dionne, Edward Antil, Pierre Ayotte, François Monty, etc And Louis-Philippe de Vaudreuil, the nephew of Pierre who was in Beauport, and Bougainville gained the naval battle opposite Yorktown. William Howe, which had climbed the plains before James Wolfe, was beaten in the following war where it made the error which made lose America for the British, at the time of the Bataille of Saratoga. William Pitt Old the, which had organized the catch of Quebec, will die in full Parliament in April 1778 when he realized that France entered in war and that America was lost.

Cultural references

The song My Country of the Cowboys Fringants refers to the event.

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